Stretched Exponential Relaxation is similar to the gradual decay of radioactive material – and as used in this Economist piece – is a perfect way of looking at how stories age. Like radioactive material, they have a half life. But the stretched bit gets at how much of a role other factors have.

Years ago, we described this as a “story getting legs” – as it jumped the average news cycle with non mainstream media continuing and expanding it. Today we have the likes of TechMeme and Digg – who not only extend the story’s half-life, they mash-it, expand it and grow its popularity. Other factors like the time of day a story is posted and the category into which it was posted suddenly become important.

This is where the difference between novelty and popularity – and I would argue, prominence – becomes apparent. You have a novel story – like the one in The Economist – it doesn’t appear popular, or prominent, until the community takes hold of it and mashes-it-up in their own environment. It’s judged against a “river of news”, ranked, tagged and categorized.

This has big ramifications for communicators.

Are we delivering news and igniting conversations at a time of day optimized for the community. I’m wondering, for instance, if this doesn’t cause everyone to rethink the early morning announcement?

The social nature of the content and platform onto which information is released suddenly matters.

The “cascade of conversation” is more important than the point of conversation. To break out of an ever shrinking half-life the volume of conversations matters. As does reader votes.

Bottom-line – the emphasis on storytelling needs to be paired with an emphasis on the mechanics of distribution.